


The Position Has Been Filled

by Omorka



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bad Parenting, Established Relationship, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Homophobia, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Spouses (Good Omens), M/M, Newt and Anathema are Mentioned but Do Not Appear, Post-Canon, The shipping isn't the main point though, Typical Teenage Profanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 06:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19997056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: Warlock has spend three years in Texas and has hated every one of them.  Once in a very long while, throwing a tantrum will get you noticed.





	The Position Has Been Filled

**Author's Note:**

> Quick warning that I didn't know how to tag for - there's a line that references diet culture in here, in case that's going to ruin anyone's evening.
> 
> Takes place three years after the end of the show.

In a very large house in a very white suburb, a very angry man shouted at a fourteen-year-old boy.

Now, the boy was a lout, no doubt about it; he was painfully skinny, with pointy features, and he gangled like anything. He did the exact minimum amount of homework required to get a B at his very expensive private school every day, and he played too many videogames with more blood than dialogue, and he delighted in typing words that would earn a motion picture an automatic R at other fourteen-year-old louts on the Internet. He never tidied up his room, either, but that was because (a) he had housekeepers for that, or at least his mother did, and (b) the percentage of fourteen-year-old boys who ever clean their rooms is vanishingly small in general.

None of that, however, was why the very angry man was yelling at him.

“You are the son of a United States Congressman! 1 ” Thaddeus Dowling barked at the boy. “And I cannot, I will not, have our entire future jeopardized by this - unmanly nonsense!”

“It’s not nonsense, Dad,” Warlock sniveled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “This is who I am!”

“It most certainly is not!” Dowling roared back. “And while you are living under my roof, you are going to act like a goddamn 100%, All-American, red-blooded male!”

Mrs. Dowling appeared at the door, her eyes hard under her perfect mascara. “Dear,” she said, in a voice that suggested she wanted to be using one of those words that she, on occasion, grounded her son for using on the Internet, instead, “Stop shouting at him. People will talk.”

“People talking is exactly the problem!” Dowling snarled. “I will not have that kind of filth under my roof, Harriet. Not now, not ever!”

“It was one dirty picture on his phone, Thad,” she replied, her voice so crisp it could suck the moisture out of the air. “I’m sure you had a lot more than that stuffed under your mattress at his age.”

“It wasn’t even dirty,” Warlock whined.

“Of course I did!” Dowling roared. “And every last one of them was a _woman_!” He turned around and stomped off down the hallway, slamming every door he came to.

Warlock burst into tears, then nearly managed to burst into tears a second time over the mortification of crying like a baby in front of his mother.

Harriet opened her purse and pulled out a slightly-worse-for-wear tissue. “Here,” she clucked, daubing at Warlock’s face. “It’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not, Mom,” Warlock sobbed. “Have you read the party platform Dad runs on? He and his constituents would rather I didn’t even exist.” He took the tissue from her and blotted his own eyes.

“Well.” Harriet patted Warlock on the shoulder. “I’m - I think it’s completely normal for kids your age to, well, to experiment a little, especially these days. And I don’t think you should feel embarrassed or guilty for - experimenting.” She swallowed, glanced down the hallway, and then continued, “And if, in a few years, you discover that you do like boys, well - it might change some of the plans I’d made for you, growing up, but I’ll still love you no matter what.”

“It’s not experimenting,” Warlock mumbled through his tears. “I _do_ like boys. The part I’m not sure about yet is whether I _only_ like boys, or if I like girls, too.”

“Oh, Warlock,” Harriet sighed, swooping in to give him the briefest of hugs. “You’re still too young to know any of that for sure. But it’s okay. You have plenty of time. Just - try not to let your father know until college, okay? Maybe you can date a nice girl once just to give him a photo op, even if it’s not serious.”

Warlock’s eyes hardened into diamonds as he glared up at her. “I’m not gonna lie to someone so I can date them for Dad to have in his stupid media portfolio,” he grated. “And I _do_ know. I’ve known I liked boys since before we left England.”

Harriet regarded her only son with dry eyes and a soft frown. “Don’t tell your father that, either,” she whispered. “He thinks bringing you up there instead of here is part of why you’re soft. By his standards,” she added, “not mine, I love you exactly the way you are.”

“Ugh, you never _listen_ ,” Warlock grunted, then bolted for the kitchen. He flew out the back door as if he had wings; it swung closed behind him on its automatic hinges, silently. 

Harriet stared after him sadly, then returned to her study instead of chasing after him. Perhaps he needed a bit of alone time. On the other hand, maybe too much alone time was part of the problem.

The Dowlings’ house had enough rooms for a small business conference and a backyard that more closely resembled a poorly-curated sculpture garden. Warlock ran down the river-rock paths until he arrived at his favorite carving, a life-sized marble boy of ten or so, with a tiny angel perched on one shoulder and an equally tiny devil on the other. The statue had been modeled off of a photo of him. Of course, he had been moving when the photo was taken, so the likeness wasn’t perfect, but it reminded him that someone had cared about him at some point. There was a wrought-iron bench next to it, perfect for sitting and tossing pebbles into the nearby fountain. 

By the time they’d moved into the house, he’d been almost too old for that. And it didn’t seem like he’d get to sit here in a few years and make out with his boyfriend, which is the other thing the bench was just about perfect for.

Warlock slumped so hard he nearly collapsed. “I hate this fucking place,” he said out loud to no one in particular, in that tone that only a genuinely wounded teenager who has typed the word ‘fuck’ far more often than they have said it can generate. 

No one yelled at him for saying it, so he tried stepping up the intensity. “I want to go back to England,” he said, louder. “I want to go home.”

That was a mistake; that broke the floodwaters, and now he was crying again, with hot tears and snot and those awful sobs that leave you gasping for air. “I want to go home,” he bawled. “I miss my old friends. I miss my old house. I miss my old room.” Curling up on the bench, he tried to think of the last time he’d felt safe and at home, like no matter what he did, he would be accepted. “I just want to go home,” he hiccupped. “I miss Nanny. I want my Nanny!”

Ten minutes later, he had cried himself to sleep.

\---

Five minutes after that, another fourteen-year-old boy, whose features were less pointy but who was also at a very gangly stage, sat bolt upright in bed with his hair sticking out in no less than six directions. He grabbed a notebook and pen that he left by his bedside 2 and wrote furiously for a few minutes, then snuck his mobile phone quietly out of its charger, stuck in his earbuds, and selected a number.

“Yes, hello, Uncle Crowley, it’s me,” Adam hissed at the little plastic microphone. “Yes, I know it’s three in the morning. No, it’s an emergency.” He paused to frown at the voice coming from the earphones. “Yes, I’m sure.” He rolled his eyes. “Okay. Three questions. One: Do I have a _brother_? Two: If I do, why is he all by himself in America? And three: Why is he crying for his _nanny_? Okay, I guess a fourth one: Why do I think this all has something to do with you and Uncle Aziraphale?”

There was a long silence on the other end, and then his uncle replied, in a voice that even over the phone sounded like the roar of a forest fire, “What was Number Three again?”

\---

Harriet was, to all appearances, perfectly poised and unruffled, chatting on her front lawn with the head of the local rotary club and two newspaper reporters about supporting the suburb’s initiative to plant roses along the local road medians. The photographers had gotten some stunning shots of her own rose beds, along with the hydrangeas.

Underneath, she was paddling like a duck in whitewater rapids. Warlock had spent the entire night in the sculpture garden; one of the lawn maintenance workers had found him just before dawn and finally sent him inside. He had refused to come out of his room for breakfast. Thad had also refused to come out of his room for breakfast. Coffee had worked on Thaddeus but not Warlock. It was as hot as the devil’s armpit out here, and while she had specifically selected this dress for breathability and a certain resistance to sweat stains, if the rotary club president didn’t stop blathering on about soil acidity, she was going to have to fake another appointment just to get inside for a dose of air conditioning.

A car she didn’t recognize pulled up at the end of the driveway, behind the reporters’ van. That was somewhat concerning; US Representatives didn’t have the same extensive security she had enjoyed as an ambassador’s wife. She nodded at the third explanation of which micronutrients the local dirt was apparently sorely lacking and tried to identify the type of vehicle.

Two figures climbed out of the back seat. One of them, a pudgy fellow, ran around to the trunk to fetch a heavily battered suitcase of a type that had gone out of style in the ‘50s. The other one, tall and stately, had a carpetbag slung over her shoulder. She was about to wave at them, to warn them that the gate was locked, when the shorter one leaned against the pedestrian gate and shouldered it open. It must not have closed all the way; she would need to call maintenance about that.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. She turned to the reporters and smiled warmly. “I’m afraid my guests have arrived a few minutes early. They must have had incredible luck with traffic getting here from the airport!” The next few minutes were a series of casual formalities as the photographers packed up their lights. The reporters understood that their time was up and bowed out graciously; the rotary club president was still chattering about proper mulching by the time the two guests had made it all the way up the driveway.

“Nanny Ashtoreth! Brother Francis!” she exclaimed, a little too loudly for how close she was standing to the rotary club president. “What a surprise!” She rushed up to Nanny and clasped her hand; she would gladly take surprise guests whom she at least already knew well over one more minute under the summer sun. “To what do I owe this visit?”

Nanny Ashtoreth licked her lips and squinted behind her dark glasses. “Oh, a friend made it possible,” she said, her voice low and soothing. Harriet had always liked chatting with Nanny; something about her presence made Harriet’s day-to-day problems seem smaller, more manageable. “Where’s dear little Warlock?”

Brother Francis grinned and nodded. “Lovely hortensias you’ve got here,” he said. “Why, you’ve got blue, white, and pink all here in the same bed.” The rotary club president turned, started to say something, went a peculiar shade of pale, and beat a hasty retreat as Brother Francis stooped to inspect the yellow roses.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Harriet confided as she led them through the front door into the sitting room, a parlor filled with tasteful antiques and enormous windows that was never used for anything other than photos and the occasional interview. The actual parlor was on the other side of the dining room, and was furnished mostly in distressed leather and other things roughly the color of Thad’s favorite whiskey. “Warlock’s been - well, he’s been wrestling with some changes, and I don’t think he’s got anyone at school he can really talk to. I think seeing a friendly face might be good for him.” They climbed the elegantly curving stairs in silence. 

After the landing, Warlock’s was the second door on the left. Harriet knocked on it twice. “Warlock, dear,” she called, “there’s someone here to see you.”

“Go away,” Warlock yelled back. “I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

Nanny cleared her throat. “Is that any way to talk to your dear old -”

She was interrupted by the door slamming open. Warlock stood just inside the doorway, wearing the same clothes he had slept in, mouth agape. “Um,” he said, staring.

“Oh, come now,” Nanny chided, “Come here and give Nanny and Brother Francis a hug.” She stooped down until her eyes were level with Warlock’s, holding out her hands.

Warlock crashed into her with enough force to rock her back on her heels. “Nanny!” He was already bawling again. “You came! I wished for you and you came!” He drew back, his face a mosaic of delight and shock and just a tile or two of fear. “Wait,” he whispered, “was that what you meant when you used to sing that weird little song?”

“Something like it,” Nanny chuckled, “but don’t worry about that right now. I’m here.” She wrapped her arms around him and rocked him against her shoulder, making little shushing noises as he hiccuped.

Warlock scrubbed at his eyes and looked up. “And you, too, Brother Francis, I’m so glad to see you, too.” He continued to cling to Nanny like a barnacle. “I’ve missed you both so much.”

Harriet clapped her hands and smiled. Unexpected guests from another country were well within her comfort zone, even if her son’s current state of distress wasn’t. “Why don’t I see if the cook is in yet,” she said brightly, “and get some lunch going? You must be starved, after your long plane flight.”

“I’d surely be grateful,” Brother Francis said, as Warlock whispered something in Nanny’s ear. He smiled indulgently at them both. “If you could scrounge up some lemonade, I can tell you it would not go amiss.”

It took about thirty minutes for Harriet and the cook to get together a platter of sandwiches, carrot and celery sticks, and low-fat veggie chips. She hadn’t thought they had any lemonade, but the cook was amused enough by the request to squeeze a few lemons into a pitcher by hand. When she called upstairs, Warlock descended between the nanny and the gardner, looking happier than she’d seen him since Thad had started his run for office.

“I was wondering,” Nanny said, as Warlock and Francis raced to the bottom of the sandwich pile, “whether Warlock was adjusting to the American educational system well. I know it can be something of a shock, especially with the recent changes in curriculum.” She selected a single triangle of turkey and Swiss, along with two carrot sticks.

Harriet briefly envied her that level of self-control, then turned back to the actual question. “Actually, that’s been an off-and-on concern for the past three years,” she confided. “We selected the best private school available, but there have still been enormous differences in both curriculum and teaching methodology, and Warlock really seems to be a better fit for the British system. He’s definitely not performing up to his potential.”

“Really?” Nanny gave Warlock a look that expressed sadness without disappointment. Harriet had no idea how she even managed that. “And here I know you do have so much potential, Warlock. We used to talk about it after lessons, do you remember?”

“I do, Nanny,” Warlock said around a mouthful of ham and cheddar. “I always knew you believed in me.” His eyes sparkled in a way Harriet hadn’t seen in years.

“Even if I didn’t always agree with what Nanny was teaching ‘im,” Brother Francis chimed in, “I knew Nanny always ‘ad the deepest faith in little Warlock.”

Warlock straightened up in his chair and swallowed. “Maybe,” he offered, “I could go to a boarding school in England instead?”

“Oh, but that’s so expensive,” Harriet objected. A vague thought that it sounded as if Warlock had rehearsed the question skidded across her consciousness and then sank without a trace. “And we’d still need someone nearby who could check on you in an emergency.”

“We might,” Nanny said, “have a reasonable workaround for that,” and her voice was like silk.

\---

Thaddeus Dowling was in a mood like a monster truck at a NASCAR race when he arrived home. He’d been gladhandling Bible-thumpers all day, promising to fight for their right to attitudes even he knew were positively medieval all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, and it was exhausting. He yearned for the days of diplomatic dinners where everyone’s suit fit at the neck and shoulders, and most of the people at the table could converse on at least two different topics.

“Warlock!” he shouted as he stepped into the parlor and sank into his favorite chair, which smelled faintly of good tobacco and cheap beer. “Are you home?”

“Of course I am.” Warlock stepped into the room with his chin held high. He even seemed to be gangling slightly less than usual, even if he was clearly still in yesterday’s clothes.

“Have you thought about what we talked about yesterday?” Dowling asked.

“Yes, Father, I have,” Warlock said, dropping his eyes to the carpet.

Dowling nodded. “And?” he said. He drummed his fingers on the chair’s arm and wished he’d gotten himself something to drink first.

“I think,” Warlock said, glancing briefly behind him and then facing his father dead-on, “that I’m going to just go on being queer, if that’s all the same to you.”

Dowling thought about that, then thought about it again, then thought about it a third time. “You most certainly will not,” he said, trying to force his voice into a calmness he had not felt in three years, not since what the generals still referred to as The Big Glitch. “Let me make this perfectly clear, Warlock. No matter what your mother says, you have two choices: You are either going to act straight, think straight, and look straight while you live under my roof, or you will not be living under my roof anymore.”

A familiar face framed in auburn appeared over Warlock’s shoulder. “That can be arranged, Mr. Dowling,” said the woman who had actually done most of Warlock’s raising.

Dowling had always, deep down in the depths of his soul, been both absolutely terrified of Nanny Ashtoreth and puzzlingly turned on by her, especially when she wore those boots with the heels. Which she was currently wearing. Because of course she was. She had a quality he had occasionally described as “steely,” but that wasn’t quite right, unless the steel was in the form of a rapier and possibly a pair of handcuffs. 

He tried to meet her eyes and failed. “This is your fault,” he stammered. “Too much of your - English stuff.” It sounded as silly to him as it probably did to her, even if he did sort of believe it.

“If it is,” Nanny Ashtoreth said, smiling wide enough to show her curiously sharp canines, “then it is my greatest fault.” She settled a reassuring hand on Warlock’s shoulder; her nails were a sensible length, a little too sharp-looking, and painted a deep glossy wine-red that somehow turned the combination of _phobos_ and _eros_ in Dowling’s guts up a notch.

“It’s more likely that it’s just the way ‘e is,” said another familiar voice out in the hallway.

“Stop trying to help,” Nanny hissed over her shoulder. She turned to fix Dowling with her gaze, like a Texas prairie chicken transfixed by a snake. “Now,” she continued, “here’s the proposal we’ve worked up, but first let me explain right now: Brother Francis and I are leaving in three hours to return to the airport, and Warlock is going with us. The only real question is - is he going with your blessing, or by my curse?”

Dowling swallowed. Warlock smiled.

\---

“And so we hoped,” Aziraphale explained to Mr. and Mrs. Wensleydale, “since his other housing options had fallen through, that perhaps you could host him, just temporarily of course, until the study-abroad program could make other arrangements?” He grinned sheepishly. “Probably about six months, they said, but could be as little as four or as many as nine, depending on funding.”

Mrs. Wensleydale looked like she wasn’t quite sure what to make of Aziraphale’s story, but her husband grasped Aziraphale’s hand and smiled. “Of course,” he agreed, “We have a guest bedroom he can use. It’s a little small; we’ve been using it as a sewing room - but we can get it cleaned up in a couple of days.”

“Mom hasn’t sewn anything in almost a decade,” Wensley pointed out to Adam. “Not since I learned to put my own lost buttons back on.”

“Seems like it’ll be all right then,” Adam decided. “At least until baby Adiaphora is old enough that Newt and Anathema can let him stay at their place.” Mrs. Wensleydale told Aziraphale she’d be delighted to host an American child.

“What I don’t understand,” Pepper said, propping her fists on her hips, “is why an American ambassador and all would care about one dirty picture in the first place. Surely he’s seen war zones and poverty and all that stuff. What’s one nude compared to all that?”

“It’s not even a dirty picture,” Warlock groaned as he and Crowley got out of the Bentley. “It’s someone our age in a bathing suit. It’s not even one of those little Italian suits; it’s swim trunks.” He swallowed. “I found it on Instagram. Didn’t steal it from anywhere. I just thought he was handsome, is all.” He glanced down; Dog was sniffing curiously at his shoes.

“Well,” Adam said, “people around here are all right with folks of all sorts, so I reckon you’ll be fine.” He paused to think on that a little further. “Greasy Johnson might be a little bit awful, but it’ll be because you’re an American, not because of who you like.”

“He’s been busy with his obsession with American football lately,” Pepper pointed out. “He might just bother you about how the teams are doing.”

“Maybe we should send him to America,” Warlock laughed. “Sounds like he and Dad would get along great.”

A cloud of dust announced Brian’s arrival. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, climbing off his bike. “What’s the news so far?”

“Well, hasn’t he grown,” Aziraphale noted to Crowley. “Across the shoulders as well as up.”

“He has indeed,” Crowley replied, watching.

Warlock squeaked and dodged behind Adam. Since Adam was broader but not substantially taller than Warlock, this did not significantly change the situation, other than setting Dog off on a barking spree.

“What’s wrong with you?” Pepper asked, wrinkling her nose.

Wensley’s eyebrows went up. “Brian,” he asked, slowly and carefully, “did you post a selfie of your beach holiday?”

“Yeah, a few,” Brian said, bewildered. “Why?”

Aziraphale inhaled sharply. “You don’t mean to say?” he asked in a rush.

“Recognized him as soon as Warlock showed me the photo,” Crowley said, nodding. “Seems like you get pulled back into Adam’s orbit, no matter how briefly you knew him, if he thinks you might be a friend.”

“Well.” Aziraphale mused, “at least he won’t be pining from afar.”

“Been entirely too much of that,” Crowley agreed. He laced his fingers through Aziraphale’s. “I was thinking,” he continued, “if Anathema and Newt are still too busy after Christmas to take in Warlock, we could - rent a cottage up here, ourselves. I could stay up here, and you could come on the weekends, ‘s not like you really open the shop on Sundays anyway.”

“We could, at that.” Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hand. “I could even revise the store’s hours for the duration. But, do let’s talk to Anathema first.”

“Sure.” Crowley watched Warlock’s eyes sparkle. “I’m glad Adam’s decided already that they’re going to be friends. It could have been ugly if he’d decided to be jealous.”

Aziraphale nodded. “I do hope he’s already decided that Mr. Young isn’t going to notice the resemblance,” he added.

“I don’t think it’ll matter, even if he does,” Crowley said, shrugging. “It’s not as if anyone can go check the hospital records at this point. Besides, our Warlock is safe again, that’s the important thing.”

Adam opened something on his phone and then pointed at it. Warlock blushed to his roots and nodded. Brian’s mouth dropped open. Pepper threw up her hands. Wensley whispered something in her ear, and they both giggled. Dog wagged its tail and ran in circles.

“He’s in good hands,” Aziraphale agreed, resting his head on Crowley’s shoulder.

Crowley leaned into him, swaying gently in place. “I wonder,” he mused, “if Anathema will be needing a nanny?”

1\. The statement was legally true. Genetically, it was not, and the fact that the boy was pointy and gangled had been leading Thaddeus, who was quite square, had never had a single gangle in his life, and had been away from his wife on diplomatic work for quite a bit of the time when the boy had theoretically been conceived, to suspect this for what were actually quite incorrect reasons. Whether it was emotionally true - well, it was close enough; Dowling had run for Congress in a heavily gerrymandered Texas district and won two years ago, so at least the last part was unambiguously correct. ↩

2\. Technically, this was the fourth such notebook he’d had since Anathema had suggesed he try keeping a dream journal. Notebooks #1 and #3 had been chewed up by Dog. Notebook #2 had accidentally caught on fire when Adam had attempted to write down the exact words and signs he had heard and seen in his nightmare. He had not yet told Uncle Crowley that the Dread Sigil Odegra was still working as well as ever. ↩

**Author's Note:**

> The title is, of course, from Mary Poppins.


End file.
